In November 2013 I detected on some very old ground in England, and found some great stuff. My story, however, has been lost. So I will regroup, and rewrite! In the meantime, please watch (well, listen really) to my first night in my freezing tent. Full story in the works!

Another visit to the farm fields (see here for original posting) brought some more good finds, including several pre-Civil War flat buttons, a large Zouave ball button, and miscellaneous lead shot, from musket balls to 2-ring bullets.

Since temps were above 40 following a few days of heavy rain, I took advantage of the “warm” weather and went back to my spot that keeps producing. While there was plenty of garbage to be found, I did manage to eke out some cool relics and coins.

1878 Somers Brother’s Chewing Tobacco Tin with a rose leaf and frog design. In its heyday it had a compass in the middle, which is now long gone.

On my third field hunt in the South NJ area, I concentrated on a roughly 50 square foot area that I had not explored previously. About an hour into it, walking in a straight line so as to grid the target area, I got a good signal ringing on my machine in the high 70s. It turned out to be a dropped (unfired) musket ball.

With the year nearing a close, I was able to get out one more time in the search of old coins and relics. I found myself on a very old property, and while there were no old coins to be found, I managed some great relics as I took advantage of the above-freezing temperatures.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I went back to my childhood home to see what else I could find. It was cold and muddy, which I wasn’t expecting, and I hadn’t dressed properly to fend off the elements. My feet, fingers, and body got cold fast, so the hunt was shorter than I had planned.

I did manage to find some interesting items during my short mission.

I found this shoe horn from the NYC Traymore Hotel. I can’t find any information on the hotel other than it had undergone renovations in 1911.

In a previous entry, I wrote about a property in the southwest, NJ, area that yielded some very interesting history. That property, once the site of a mid-1700s structure and now home to an 1890s farmhouse, sits adjacent to a vast acreage of fields that are farmed from April through November. In late November, when the property owner notified me that the fields were barren (yet ripe for metal detecting) following the annual soybean harvest, I made the 40-minute trek there with excitement as to what history they held.

I returned for a second scouring of the late-1800s house built on the foundation of a 1740s-era house (see an account of the initial trip here) and made some more period finds, including a large concave button with what appears to be an “S” on the front; two colonial shoe buckles (one with chape intact, one just the frame), and various flat buttons. What a great property, not to mention always-gracious hosts!